Mission Soledad, Our Lady of Sorrow

Revisited Mission Soledad to take a close-up of Our Lady of Sorrow.

Love the expression!

A painting of Our Lady of Guadalupe on the wall facing the altar.

When I was visiting Mission Soledad a couple of weeks ago, I noticed the wonderful, sad expression on the face of the Our Lady of Sorrow on the alter. (Ironically, I was not able to see it with my naked eyes. I only noticed it when I was magnifying a image to check focus.) At the time, I had only the 24mm and 35mm lenses with me, so I put the 35mm on Sony A6000, made it a 52mm (due to the crop factor of APS-C sensor), took as much a "close-up" as I could, and went home.

I visited another Mission (Mission San Antonio de Padua) one week later, took more photos, and learned more and more from my shooting experience. I also read a wonderful book "Rendezvous with Art", some of the ideas in the book made me rethink about ways of looking at California Missions. Then I remembered the shot I had missed. "Oh, I wish I had brought a longer lens", I thought. It was just a thought, I didn't intend to go back. After all, the Mission is 100 miles away from my home. It would be a 3-hour drive, round trip. However, that missing shot kept nagging me. I felt the vivid expression of the Madonna deserved to be seen, even just by a handful friends of mine (who read this blog).  

So I packed my three lenses (21mm, 35mm, and 100mm) and went back to Mission Soledad. Knowing there would be very few people visiting the Mission, I also took a tripod so I could shot in low ISO. Am I happy with the result this time? No, not quite. I soon realized a 135mm would be more suitable for this job (which I don't have, and I don't want to use a zoom lens for this photo), but with some cropping, I could finally move on.